To Sam Miller-Christiansen, his 2014 Chevrolet Volt is the best car he has owned. And he was willing to tell anyone, including the team developing the next-generation Volt.

“I said that if they could improve the overall EV range, it would make one of my favorite cars even better,” Miller-Christiansen said. “To my amazement, they’ve done it.”

It is just one example of how the 2016 Volt was engineered with input from the collective voices of loyal owners.

Shortly after launching the first-generation Volt, Chevrolet convened and met once a month with a customer advisory board of 12 owners from across the country to understand how consumers were operating their Volts.

“The Volt represented a completely new classification of electric vehicles, and we were unsure of how people would react or how this vehicle would fit in their daily lives,” said Darin Gesse, Volt product manager. “So we began asking simple questions like how and when the owners plugged in their Volt, which directly impacted the development of the next generation.

“We talk about putting the customer at the center of everything we do, and we’ve literally done that with the 2016 Volt.”